


Trust

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: Partial Harmonics [7]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Multi, kink bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-15
Updated: 2010-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-10 03:30:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trust is the only currency that matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Note: written for the prompt "breathplay"

If there's a currency between them that's worth more than trust, Cougar doesn't know what it is, what it could be. Between all five of them, even, and then between the three of them even more. With what they were, it was already more valuable than the damn guns they carried; with where they are now, with what they have to be able to do, it ranks right up there with "air" and "water". Trust in everything: words, skills, intentions. Necessary as breathing.

And more addictive than heroin.

He'd thought, he'd always thought, that it would take longer. It's addictive, but it's like any other acquired taste - you hate it, the first handful of times you have to try; it's distasteful a handful after; it's not until it's become part of your background and you try to quit that you realize just how much you need it, now.

(Not until it's threatened. Roque was _never_ going to leave the port alive.)

So Cougar always expected it to take longer, left it alone as the addiction set in, as Aisha got more and more snared. He'd expected, honestly, that it would get all the way until the end before she realized what she had was worth the colonel's life, even worth hers, because beyond it was pretty much nothing.

He's seldom been less unhappy with being wrong. And he's willing, now, to decide that the whole cluster-fuck had been worth it. For that much. For throwing everything into sharp relief long before it would have been, and for meaning that now, now he could let his guard back down again.

_You didn't know what you were missing until now. _

She does, now. Aisha does. He'd never say a word, never give a sign, but he can watch her testing it. Controlled tests, surveys of the boundaries, of what it means and what it does. Clinical fascination; private revelation.

(Jensen said his piece to get them here, in the first place: he's folded that attention back up and slid it away, because he doesn't trust himself, his objectivity in terms of her, and just trusts Cougar's instead.)

Testing, when she lets herself fall asleep while they're still awake; testing, when she loosens her grip, just a little, on the secrecy of her accounts, so that if something happens (the kind of _if_ that comes with an unspoken _when_) they've got a solid 1.5 million without needing her, conscious, to get it for them.

Testing, the first time she guides Cougar's hand to her throat during sex, tightens her fingers around his to tell him to tighten his grip - not playing with her life, he knows that, by now he's seen her get out of far worse. No: playing with the idea that she doesn't have to think about it. Playing with the idea that she can have what she wants, that she can run the edge that draws her, without having to worry about it - without having to even stop to ask the question.

His hand fits most of the way around her throat; his fingers press through skin to feel cartilage, the contraction of muscle, the pulse of artery and vein. Her hand still resting on his forearm, and the way her fingers _don't_ dig in.

The count is twelve, and he kisses above his hand as he lets go.


End file.
